Foot-Powered Scooters Could Be The Most Dangerous Toys

Scooters were linked to 580,000 toy-related injuries between 2000 and 2011.

By Matt Moreno | December 1, 2014

We've all been there. The parents take the training wheels off the bike, and boom — a scuffed-up elbow and a throbbing knee.

But new research suggests it's scooters — not bikes — that kids might have the most painful memories of.

Between 1990 and 2011, toy-related injuries jumped about 40 percent according to research from Nationwide Children's Hospital. Scooters, wagons and tricycles caused 42 percent of injuries to kids between 5 and 17 and 28 percent of injuries to those younger than 5. Scooters alone caused 580,000 injuries between 2000 and 2011. Doctors blame a spike in scooter sales as well as a lack of proper scooter safety equipment.

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"If there were three things that you could do to prevent injury to a child on a scooter or other ride-on toy, those three things would be wear a helmet, wear a helmet, wear a helmet," said study senior author Dr. Gary Smith.

In all, about 3.3 million kids were sent to emergency rooms for toy-related injuries in those two decades, which breaks down to about one injury every three minutes.